


Charm'd Magic

by fajrdrako



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fajrdrako/pseuds/fajrdrako
Summary: Someone in Crosby Hall does not like the Queen.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 78
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Charm'd Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Galadriel1010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/gifts).



_Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!  
No hungry generations tread thee down;  
The voice I hear this passing night ... hath  
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam  
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn._

-John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale 

A building is supposed to stay where it is and put up no argument, to be a fixed point in space. Some buildings don't care—they expand, taking over other lots around them. Others are moved—plank by plank or brick by brick or stone by stone—away from floodwaters or nearer the crossroads or where the view is better. 

It can be due to construction, reconstruction, exportation, apportation, teleportation, or even alien abduction, for all I know. Some buildings just don't stay where they are erected. 

For example, Crosby Hall. It started out in Bishopsgate, built by Sir John Crosby, a wool merchant with aspirations. Wool was the hot commodity of the late fifteen century, and he made the most of it. He called it a Hall but it was really a palace, good enough for the likes of RIchard III, back when he was just the Duke of Gloucester. When the Tudors came on the scene it held the hustle and bustle of the royal outliers, people who supplied the court, served the court, and did their best to survive the court. Catherine of Aragon visited once. 

So when Nightingale was invited there some five hundred years later, I raised my eyebrows. "Posh," I said. The old place had migrated to Chelsea in Edwardian times, landing some plum Thames-side property before being passed from hand to hand,to be finally bought at boot-sale prices from the City by financier Christopher Moran. Moran pulled out all the stops to renovate it in fine Tudor style, overspending without shame. Rumour claims he spent £100 million refurbishing it. It's been closed to the public ever since. 

"Nouveau-riche, rather," said Nightingale dryly. "Moran wants to talk to me, and since he rang me himself, I suspect it is actually Folly business that he wants kept quiet." 

"Need me to come along?" 

"Have you finished your paper analyzing Paracelsus' De gradibus?" 

Lying to Nightingale was like lying to my mother: it never worked out for the better. "Not quite," I said. This meant I had written the first paragraph—well, half of the first paragraph. 

"Better get on with it, then,"said Nightingale cheerily, and got his walking stick. "I should be back by one." 

He wasn't. I worked on my paper, practiced my formae, took Toby for a walk, and called the Met to see if there were any interesting new cases—which there were not—before realizing that it was already "past one", and I'd had no word from Nightingale. Technically I had the day off, but under Nightingale's supervision, that was more or less a technicality. 

Perhaps he was stuck in traffic, or decided to shop, but it was unlike him to stay out when Molly had made a late lunch for him at home. I was still hesitating between watching football in my carriage-house room or working on Paracelsus in the Folly library when the phone rang. It was Christopher Moran, who identified himself and asked crisply for DC Grant. 

"Speaking." 

Brief pause. "DCI Nightingale. Is he there?" 

"I thought he was with you," I said. 

"He was. We were talking in the breakfast room—I went to get a book for him, and when I got back, he was gone. Utterly gone. He left his cane. His car is still parked in its spot. We were in the middle of discussing a difficulty I have been having. And yet, he is nowhere in the building. Are you able to come over?" 

So I would get to see the Tudor mansion after all. I had a thought of myself disappearing from the breakfast room, then Saheed—or whoever turned up to find me—disappearing in turn, and then whoever turned up to find them. A long line of Met lackeys falling into the void—I left a note for Molly, just in case. 

By the time I was at the door, Toby was rubbing himself at my ankles. 

"We had a walk already," I said firmly. 

He tilted his head, staring up with expressive, possibly exasperated, eyes. He had a point: he was a police dog, after all, and might be able to sniff out Nightingale with his normal canine nose, a supernatural thing in itself. Or at least find vestigia. 

"Oh, all right," I said, relenting. I got the lead. "You can come. But you have to behave." 

He was too happy to argue. 

~ ~ ~ 

Crosby Hall sat on the Chelsea Embankment with the palatial splendor of Disneyland, if Disneyland had been designed by the man behind Hampton Court. It looked Tudor to the core, but it was the Tudor of set dressing, all clean and spruce with unchipped bricks and dormer windows, mullioned casements and tall chimneys. I could guess it was filled with state of the art technology, starting with the disembodied security voice that replied when I gave my name and video-taped my entry for posterity. If Moran had spent £100 million on the old place, he'd squeezed extra value out of every pound. 

I went through a passageway into a beautiful Tudor garden with a fountain, shaped hedges and the gleanings of warm August sun. Toby gave a discreet "woof" and began sniffing the 3 air. The garden was empty, except for a child playing with a ball. He—she? No, he—was dressed in colourful shapeless clothes and soft leather shoes. He looked curiously at us as we came closer. Eight years old, I'd guess, or maybe a small ten. 

Toby woofed again. "Good day, sir," said the boy. At which point I twigged that this was no real boy, or at least no ordinary real boy, and certainly not a living boy. 

"Good day," I replied, imitating his tone. "I am DC Peter Grant of the London Metropolitan Police. And you?" 

"Jackanapes," said the boy, squatting down to pet Toby. I couldn't quite make out whether the ghost hand made contact with him or not, but Toby squirmed happily and wagged his tale, and the boy laughed aloud. "You can call me Jack if you like." 

Clearly, I had an in with this kid: Toby had earned an extra sausage already. "I'm looking for a man named Nightingale. Have you seen him?" 

The ghost boy tilted his head sideways in thought. "Does he sing?" 

"No. He does magic." 

"Is he a good person?" 

"A very good person," I said. 

"Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't." He picked his nose. Scuffed his toe. "There's lots of people  
here do magic. There's the old one, and the scary one, and the big one, and the monk, and  
the crazy one. There's the girl who does love spells and her sister who does poisons, but  
she only poisons villains. And that's not even counting the blind people." 

"Who are they?" 

"The ones who can't see us." 

Which would be Moran, his family, and servants, probably. So the ghosts here could see  
each other, and the living too; cohabiting with the still-living who could see none of them.  
Nightingale and I were a third category, probably, alive but able to interact with ghosts, presumably at the ghosts' discretion. 

"It would have been this morning," I said. "Probably around eleven o'clock." 

He stared at me in perplexity. Either he was too young to tell time, or it was an unclear concept for a ghost. I tried again."Have you been here in the garden all day?" 

"Dunno." He looked down at Toby, who was sniffing the grass. 

"How long have you been at Crosby Hall? A few hours? Weeks? Centuries?" 

"What's a century?" 

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Jack, if you see Nightingale, could you tell him that Toby and I were looking for him?" 

"Yes, sir," said Jack, and Toby stretched his next to lick Jack's cheek, which made Jack laugh out loud. "Can I keep him and play with him?" 

I put on my best grown-up voice. "No. Toby is a working dog and must continue to work." 

Jack did not argue. Toby hung his head, disappointed. A voice behind me said, "There you are! In here." 

It was Moran, who clearly could not see Jack. And when I looked back, I couldn't see Jack either. 

I picked Toby up, and entered Crosby Hall. 

~ ~ ~ 

Moran led me into his study—not his breakfast room, I noticed. Perhaps he didn't go there after lunch. He looked sourly at Toby. "Did you really need to bring the dog?" 

"He is trained to find missing persons," I said. It was literally true, though it implied more sophisticated training than Toby had ever actually received. "If anyone can find Nightingale, he can." 

"He won't pee on the furniture?" 

Nor more than I will, I thought, offended on Toby's behalf, but I only said, "Perhaps you should tell me about the case you brought Nightingale in for." I kept Toby firmly under my arm. He didn't mind. It gave him a chance to look at everything from the human perspective. 

Moran looked at me sharply. "How did you know there was a case? Did Nightingale tell you?" 

"I assumed." 

"Well. Yes. It's a matter of graffiti. Rude things written on the walls within my house. It started a few weeks ago, but—it's been escalating." 

"What does the graffiti say?" 

"Anti-monarchy nonsense. Ranting against the Queen. The embarrassing thing is, the Queen is going to be here herself in a few days for the unveiling of her new portrait. No doubt this has some disturbed person… riled up. The words have become threats." 

"Can you show me the writing?" 5 

"No. It disappears after a few hours as mysteriously as it appears." 

"All within the house? Your security didn't catch anything?" 

I wasn't trying to imply anything, but he picked up on my tone. "My security is the best," he said waspishly. "I have complete confidence in the installation and the security staff. I have cameras. I have guards. I have sensors that can catch a microbe drop, and I can't catch the perpetrators. The writing doesn't show up on camera, only to the naked eye." 

"Can you tell me what it said?" 

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. "I dictated this. Nightingale wrote it down. I didn't want to trust it to a computer." In Nightingale's neat clear printing it said: 

Royal daughter of a whore God damn the Queen Filth of a rotten line Bastard of a bastard house False monarch Queen of lies and oppression 

The last note was probably the one which panicked Moran: 

Death to Elizabeth 

"That was this morning," he said. "It was on the inside of my bedroom door when I got up this morning. There was no one in the room but me all night. I've tried to keep this from the servants, from my family, but the damn things turn up randomly." 

"Could you describe the handwriting? Neat, messy, large, cramped? 

"I'd call it… sprawling. There are many loops. Florid. Baroque, even." 

"Show me where the graffiti was found," I said. This got me and Toby a tour of the house, though not all eighty-five rooms and broom closets were covered. It did include the servants' passages, lifts and kitchens. "I take it you have questioned the staff?" 

"None of them could have done it," he said. "Everyone is visible on the surveillance footage, all of them doing whatever they should be doing. We double-checked alibis. Two days ago—at the time of the 'false monarch' incident—a cleaner walked past seconds before the words appeared. My head of security questioned him extensively. He insisted he saw no one else in the hallway." 

Besides, he explained, every door in the building was locked, and could be opened only by the palm-signature of those authorized to open it. "You're going to need access to the whole place," he said, though he didn't look happy about it. The scanner was there in his desk drawer; he synched it with his phone, and took a picture of my left hand. "There," he said. "Any door here will open to you. You don't need to touch it. Just raise your hand." 

That seemed to me as close to magic as anything I'd seen, and I itched to have a look at the program. But I dutifully said nothing. This place was full of technological wonders, magic writing, ghosts, and someone or something who could make Nightingale disappear without a trace. I couldn't let myself be distracted. For my money, Nightingale was the foremost magic-wielder of the 20th century, and, so far, of the 21st. I said that to him once. He had looked at me sadly and replied, "Only because the better men died." 

Funny how, until that moment, I hadn't considered that Nightingale might be dead. A chill ran down my spine. Toby squirmed in my arms, and tried to lick my chin. I scratched his ear and he subsided. 

Funny thing was, he hadn't yapped yet. That meant he could sense no vestigium anywhere. The oldest part of this building was a century older than Shakespeare. Usually buildings like this had a whiff of magic somewhere in their bricks, but it was as if this place had been wiped clean. 

"You believe the intruder to be supernatural, then?" I asked. Of course he did; why else call Nightingale? But I wanted to hear it in his words. 

"What do you think?" 

"It bears looking into," I said. 

The room in which the Queen's portrait would be unveiled was like a large portrait gallery in itself. The pictures on the wall were of people who looked both powerful and important, each in the fashion of its day. 

Moran watched me look at them. He said, "The magical phrase which has motivated me is: to put the hall back into its historical context." I didn't mention that Crosby Hall had never been a Tudor building. Historical context, after all, is whatever you make of it. The statement had the ring of a journalists' meme. Moran usually avoided interviews, maybe because he had trailed an assortment of scandals behind him. Discreditable conduct? Insider dealing Well, he'd risen from poverty to riches by the time he was out of his teens; there were likely to be a few cut corners there. 

But the ghosts didn't seem to be targeting him. They were targeting the Queen. I said, "I think we should put our expert to work," and put Toby down. "Find Nightingale." 

He tilted his head and looked at me quizzically. 

We waited. 

Unimpressed, Moran said, "I'll leave you to it, then. If you need me, I'll be in the study." 

Good. This would be easier to deal with without him. Toby let me wait a bit longer while he considered, sniffing the air. Then he trotted down a hallway, and I followed at the end of his lead. 

We went through several rooms without pausing before the sniffing at baseboards began. I followed Toby up stairs and down—trust Toby to avoid the lift. I tried not to focus on what might have happened to Nightingale. I wondered which would give out first, my feet or Toby's nose. Finally in a back storeroom beyond the kitchens he started to paw at a door. Another broom closet? I held up my hand to unlock it, and it swung open. 

Yes. Broom closet, complete with broom, mop, pail, and the harsh scent of cleaners—paraphernalia I was familiar with from Mum's work and my own time as a cleaner. Nothing unusual about it. But Toby went into the closet and started nosing at the corner. 

Not an ordinary closet, then. 

I stepped in beside him, closing the door behind me.There was an odd scent in the air now—not cleaning fluid, but something quite different. Cinnamon? Cardamom? 

Toby yelped. 

Disorientation. It was as if the walls and floor disappeared, and we were floating in space, without gravity, without light, without even time. I held Toby's lead tight in my hand, but could not speak to call him. No air, either. 

Between one second and the next, it was over. We were still in the dark, but on a normal, hard floor. Toby sat, leaning against my leg, panting slightly. 

I said to him, "Should we shed a little light?" and cast a werelight, to see where we were. 

We were in a high vaulted circular room, with half-columns around the circumference. It was nothing like the flashy Tudor refurbishments Moran had done - Romanesque, perhaps? Or Gothic in its brooding gloom. The floor reflected my light. There was no furniture, but a figure—a human figure—floated in the air in the centre of the room. I raised my werelight, and brightened it to see better. 

It was Nightingale. 

I rushed towards him, Toby reluctantly following. I bumped my nose on—nothing. Air. Solid air. Air solidified by magic? Still about two feet away from him, I could move no closer to Nightingale, who floated supine four feet above the floor, as if asleep. 

"Nightingale!" I shouted. "Sir! Wake up!" 

He did not wake. I could have been shouting at Sleeping Beauty. I stared until I was satisfied that he was breathing, then looked around. I suspected the room was underground; possibly old cellars. It was about thirty feet in diameter, with a vaulted ceiling about twenty feet high, more at the apex. Just as my werelight started to dissipate, the ceiling started to glow—not brightly, but giving me quite enough to see by, as if it had swallowed and reflected my light back into the room. 

"Well, chum," I said to Toby, "You did it. You found him. Good work. Where do you think we are?" 

The pup looked as puzzled as I felt. I tried a few spells; one to break through the force shield —no. One to awaken Nightingale, the only person who might know how to get out of here—no. I tapped the outer walls, felt for changes in heat, prodded for hidden doors. Nothing. 

How were we even breathing? There was no ventilation here, and no windows. 

An eager voice at my elbow said, "Did you find him? Is this your friend?" 

I turned to face Jackanapes. "Jack! How did you get in?" 

He shrugged, universal child language for both the dead and the alive. I said, "Yes, this is my friend and my teacher, Thomas Nightingale. Do you know how to wake him up?" 

"No," said Jack. "He's enchanted. I can't even go close." He started to pet Toby again. Toby let him, but didn't look cheered up. 

"How do we get out of here?" I asked. 

He had to think about it. "I don't know. The walls don't stop me or the others, but they stop you and Toby. Maybe I should ask my friends." 

"The people here who do magic? Could you bring one of them?" 

"I'll try," said Jack, and he walked through the wall and disappeared, cool as anything. 

I said to Toby, "I hope he comes back before suppertime." Toby looked alarmed. It had possibly been the wrong thing to say. The odds were low that Jack would come back with sausages. I sat against the wall and we waited. 

Waiting gave me time to worry. The thing to do in any sticky situation is to stay calm, but I felt a creeping distress that came from both helplessness and concern. Being able to see that Nightingale was alive did not help. He was enspelled, comatose, and at the mercy of some unknown persons or persons of probable evil intent. 

I had to save him… but how? 

Toby made a huffling sound. "Yeah, I'm just anxious because I'm hungry," I said, with a friendly pat on his haunches. "You too, right?" 

Jack came back at last, leading another ghost, This one was an older man in a black gown and cap with a white ruff and white pointed beard. He had the annoyed expression of someone who has been disturbed in his work, but at the sight of Nightingale, Toby, and me, he stopped scolding the boy. His eyes were bright and piercing. He looked weirdly familiar. 

"See! I told you they were here," said Jack, letting go of the old man's sleeve. "I was telling the truth." 

The man in black turned his attention to Nightingale. He raised his hands. He spoke in a low chant which I guessed to be part Latin, part Greek, and part Welsh. After a few minutes he stopped, and lowered his arms. Whatever his incantation had been, it had no effect on Nightingale. He looked annoyed. 

My memory kicked into place. "Dr. John Dee," I said, as I stood. There was a picture in on of the hallways at the Folly, John Dee Performing an Experiment before Queen Elizabeth I, with the Virgin Queen watching Dee while he cooked up a potion—light? fire?—and an alligator hung improbably over their heads. 

Dee growled, "Sir. You have the advantage of me. Are you an angel?" 

Well, hardly. I bowed, which I thought suitable, though maybe I'd just watched too much Shakespearean theatre at school. "Peter Grant." 

"You are a Scot?" 

"No, I am English. I am a Detective Constable of the London Metropolitan Police." 

"Constable?" 

"I work for the law," I explained. "The Crown. The British government." 

"Ah," he said. "One of Walsingham's men, then. This is your friend?" 

"I can't wake him," I said. 

"You are a practitioner?" 

"I am his apprentice. He is one of the best." I would have said "the best", but decided just in time that it might not be tactful, under the circumstances. 

"Ah," said John Dee. He looked at Nightingale for a long while. Then he said, "There are truly malign doings here. Do you know how it happened?" 

"I found him like this.Writings have appeared on the walls at Crosby Hall, threatening the Queen's life. He was called to investigate." 

Dee nodded thoughtfully, but remained silent. The expression of his face was one I had often seen on Nightingale's. I waited. 

"Can you save him?" asked Jackanapes, hopefully.

"No. But I know those who can." He raised his arms. "Sir John of Crosby Hall, come to me!" 

Sir John Crosby did not come through the wall, as Jackanapes and Dee had done. He appeared in a wisp of smoke, or light, or glitter, or maybe a transporter beam—hard to tell which. He looked like a well-dressed fifteenth-century financier could be expected to, and I was slow to realize that he was not a ghost. He was alive, and as soon as I saw that, I knew what he must be. He was the genius of the place, the founder and guardian of Crosby Hall, who had stayed with his splendid home, or what was left of it. What it had been transformed into. 

"Well, man?" he snapped. "What is it now?" He reminded me of Christopher Moran. Five centuries apart, same character type. 

"Evil magic," said Dee, without deference. "You see this man, imprisoned in this hypogeum? He is an agent of the crown. He has been overpowered by the Queen's enemies." 

Crosby went as close as he could to get a look at him. "His name?" 

"Thomas Nightingale," I said. He glanced at me, then back at Nightingale. "You say he serves Queen Elizabeth? I believe I may know our perpetrator. Who else, who resides here, would wish ill to the Queen?" 

I was not sure what "here" meant in this context, but Jackanapes did. "Brother Heraclius!" said Jack, exultant. Everyone looked at him, even Toby, who had been settling in for a snooze by the wall. "We know he hates her, and all the royal house." 

I guessed he was talking about one of the ghosts in the place, and not one of Moran's living staff. 

Dee said loudly, "Brother Heraclius, I summon thee to appear before me and Sir John Crosby to answer for your misdeeds." He clapped his hands three times. 

And there he was, stumbling a little, as if he had fallen from a great height as I thought I had. Aged maybe eighteen to twenty, with a tonsure and rather grubby monk's togs, eating what looked like a strawberry tart. "What?" he said defiantly, popping the rest of it into his mouth, chewing and wiping his ghostly sticky fingers on his habit. "What is it this time?" 

Sir John looked stern. "Lad, were you threatening the Queen with your dark magic?" 

"Were you writing openly in the overworld?" demanded Dee, more sharply. 

"What if I was? She's a bastard heretic and a whore and this man," waving his hand rather wildly in Nightingale's direction, "is her minion and pawn for her evil." 

"This is not for you to meddle with!" Crosby thundered. 

"Demons take thee, monster!" Deesaid, raising his hand as if to summon something ugly. 

I said, "Excuse me." 

They all looked at me—even Heraclius, though Toby had lost interest in the conversation and curled up to nap, sausages being nowhere in sight. 

I said to Heraclius, "Why do you hate Queen Elizabeth?" 

"Because she persecutes the true faith, and fills the land with power-hungry heretics. She is coming to this very building, and I must take this chance to destroy her.." 

I said, "I believe we have a case of mistaken identity here. Heraclius, the Queen you are talking about, was she the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn?" 

"Yes, the Antichrist and the—" 

John Dee started to interrupt, but I raised my hand to quiet him. "The Queen who is coming to Crosby Hall next week is from another time, a later time. She is the daughter of King George VI.. She was not alive in your time and did nothing to persecute your people." 

"You lie!" 

"He does not lie," said Crosby. "This man serves another Queen. The place is the same, the time is different." He said to me, as if in apology, "This young monk came here in the entourage of Queen Catherine of Aragon, whom he adored. He died on the night she visited, and has been angry and defiant ever since, despite the passage of time. It seems he is meddling in magic too strong for him." 

"For justice!" shouted Heraclius. "For the Holy Faith!" His eyes shone with unshed tears and strong conviction. 

"This is injustice," said Crosby. "Free this man, NIghtingale. I command it." 

"No!" 

"I am your master here. Brother! Obey my command." 

He did not need to raise his voice. Brother Heraclius sulkily went as close as he could to Nightingale, and started to chant in a language I could not follow. It was quite unlike the incantation of John Dee. He moved his hands in intricate gestures. Shining werelights appeared around him, flickering, swooping, and disappearing. The atmosphere in the room changed and I knew the magic force shield had disappeared. Nightingale floated to the floor. 

Crosby put his hand on Heraclius' shoulder. "Come, I have penance for you." 

"No," whispered Heraclius, but he walked through the wall, with Crosby's heavy hand on his shoulder. It seemed the wall was no obstacle to Crosby, either. 

Dee said to Jack, "Come, child." 

"I want to play with the dog." 

"No," said Dee. "The dog is sleeping." But he spoke kindly, and held out his hand to the boy, who took it. Jack said, "Good-bye, Mr. Grant. Good-bye, Toby." 

"God be with you both," said Dee, and they too disappeared. 

Nightingale moved onto his elbow, awake. "Peter? What—" 

Then the disorientation came over us both. I pulled Toby under my arm and grasped Nightingale's arm to pull him up. "It's—" I had no time to say more before the void grew around us, and then we stood in the hallway at Crosby Hall, with full daylight, and a triumphant yap from Toby that had nothing to do with vestigium. 

"There was a place near here, full of magical energy" said Nightingale, "I approached it, and remember nothing more." 

"It was a spell cast by a powerful but inept practitioner," I said. "Possibly hysterical. He wanted to attack the Queen. He thought you meant to protect her." 

"Well, so I did," said Nightingale reasonably. "I take it you handled the problem? And rescued me as well?" 

"Yes, sir. I will make my report. I don't believe Mr. Moran will be troubled by more mysterious writing on his walls." 

"Well done, then," said Nightingale. He bent down to rub Toby's head. "I believe your skills are progressing well. Have you finished your paper on Paracelsus?" 

"Almost," I said convincingly. 

\- End -


End file.
